California Joins States Insulating VoIP Providers from Local Public Utility Regulators

On Friday, California Governor Jerry Brown signed SB 1161, which prohibits the state’s Public Utilities Commission from any new regulation of Voice over Internet Protocol or other IP-based services without the legislature’s authorization.

California now joins over twenty states that have enacted similar legislation.

The bill, which is only a few pages long, was introduced by State Senator Alex Padilla (D) in February. It passed both houses of the California legislature with wide bi-partisan majorities.

California lawmakers and the governor are to be praised for quickly enacting this sensible piece of legislation.

Whatever the cost-benefit of continued state regulation of traditional utilities such as water, power, and landline telephone services, it’s clear that the toolkit of state and local PUCs is a terrible fit for Internet services such as Skype, Google Voice or Apple’s FaceTime.

Historically, as I argued in a Forbes piece last month, the imposition of public utility status on a service provider has been an extreme response to an extreme situation—a monopoly provider, unlikely to have competition because of the high cost of building and operating competing infrastructure (so-called “natural monopoly”), offering a service that is indispensable to everyday life.

Service providers meeting that definition are transformed by PUC oversight into entities that are much closer to government agencies than private companies. The PUC sets and modifies the utility’s pricing in excruciating detail. PUC approval is required for each and every change or improvement to the utility’s asset base, or to add new services or retire obsolete offerings.

In exchange for offering service to all residents, utilities in turn are granted eminent domain and rights of way to lay and maintain pipes, wires and other infrastructure.

VoIP services may resemble traditional switched telephone networks, but they have none of the features of a traditional public utility. Most do not even charge for basic service, nor do they rely on their own dedicated infrastructure. Indeed, the reason VoIP is so much cheaper to offer than traditional telephony is that it can take advantage of the existing and ever-improving Internet as its delivery mechanism.

Nor would residents be in any way helped by interposing a regulator to review and pre-approve each and every change to a VoIP provider’s service offerings. Rather, the lightning-fast evolution of Internet services provides perhaps the worst mismatch possible for the deliberate and public processes of a local PUC.

Software developers don’t need eminent domain.

But the most serious mismatch between PUCs and VoIP providers is that there is little inherently local about VoIP offerings. Where a case can be made for local oversight of public utilities operating extensive–even pervasive–local infrastructure, it’s hard to see what expertise a local PUC brings to the table in supervising a national or even international VoIP service.

On the other hand, it’s not hard to imagine the chaos and uncertainty VoIP providers and their customers would face if they had to satisfy fifty different state PUCs, not to mention municipal regulators and regulators in other countries.

In most cases that would mean dealing with regulators on a daily basis, on every minor aspect of a service offering. In the typical PUC relationship, the regulator becomes the true customer and the residents mere “rate-payers” or even just “meters.”

Public utilities are not known for their constant innovation, and for good reason.

Whatever oversight VoIP providers require, local PUCs are clearly the wrong choice. It’s no surprise, then, that SB 1161 was endorsed by major Silicon Valley trade groups, including TechNet, TechAmerica, and the Silicon Valley Leadership Group.

The law is a win for California residents and California businesses—both high-tech and otherwise.

It’s bad when people who never bother to get the facts right congratulate
decisions that help the phone companies — and harm the state of California —
and those who depend on communications services.

The utility — the PSTN, public switched telephone networks — in California, as in every other Verizon and AT&T, received
massive financial incentives to rewire the entire state with fiber optics —
they collected billions in each state — and never did it, especially in California.

By 2000, now AT&T was supposed to have 5.5 million
households wired with fiber to homes – and spend $16 billion to do it – never built
it, never spent the money – and the state Public Utility Commission – never
removed the massive financial incentives, which they doubled down in the next
decade. Then Pac Bell even took a $3 billion tax write off of the same networks
copper wiring that is still in use.

U-Verse is based on the PSTN copper wiring and it is the
reason it will never get to 100 mbps and that’s in 1 direction — top speed less than 25 Mbps.– the other
direction is slow and can’t do ‘cloud computing’ – and just passable VOIP.

But you don’t care about that, it appears. You don’t care
that now AT&T pulled a massive bait and switch – customers paid for a fiber
optic future in California
– and got a dirt road.

Worse, AT&T announced its stopping to even upgrade the
rest of the state – over 50% won’t get upgraded – which means that they can’t
even use VOIP.

And this is why California and the rest of the US are 15th
in the world in broadband – because, well, it’s now clear that AT&T
controls the state legislature and had undue influence over any of the
regulators to actually hold them to any commitments that would have required
them to actually build out the networks — even though they collected billions to do
so.

And it means that there’s also no cable competition, which
was the reason why the networks were to be upgraded in the first place.

But you focus on the ‘freedom’ of VOIP and not allowing the
PUC – the same group that gave the company 100% rate increases over the last 6
years – to regulate – which means that everything is going to be an information
service so the 50% of those who are not upgraded – if there service breaks – to
bad – the company is no longer obligated as the old regulations were for ‘telecommunications’

Meanwhile, the utility
— the PSTN — was also supposed to be opened to all forms of competition over
those wires —and in with the help of the FCC closed these networks to
competitors — putting thousands of competitors out of business, not by market
forces but by regulatory capture of the FCC.

And yet, you seem believe that ALEC-based legislation designed to remove
regulations from the incumbent companies is a good thing.

But you also missed the other point – which is that AT&T and Verizon have
been dismantling the utility over the last 6 years – U-Verse, which uses the
utility wires, is getting a free ride as it uses the wires but dumps the
expenses into the utility side of the equation, profits in another bucket, then the companies go back and get rate
increases claiming losses. And ‘utility’ customers end up paying more –
especially those who will never get U-Verse because the company isn’t doing
upgrades. And the PUC has been helping
this movement by not auditing the ‘affiliate transactions’.

Maybe you should actually do your homework and answer — Why
is AT&T still using the copper networks? — How did AT&T take control
of the PUC and get 100% rate increases on phone services over the last 6 years?

And how do customers who don’t get upgraded actually get to use VOIP as it
requires broadband and AT&T is not upgrading its utility plant to supply
broadband?

The utility isn’t the enemy — It was supposed to be
upgraded to all fiber and it was supposed to be open to all competitors and it
was supposed to service everyone. VOIP is a service, not the network and could
also be offered over a fully fiber network.

And thanks to the power of now-AT&T to blow smoke – and convince
people that they are right – California is going to have less competition, not
get upgraded and have slow broadband, no cable competition in most of the state,
and now, no oversight.